My Interests

I am interested in how populations adapt to shifting environmental conditions, and am particularly drawn to parasites, invasive species, and other species perceived as disruptive. Most of my work has focused on a variety of crab species, including European green crab, Tanner crab, snow crab, and the blue king crab. However, I have also dipped into the fish world, with work on salmon, cod, and herring. I also have an interest in fishery management and the relationship between the marine and human world. I occasionally publish posts on the Bitter Crab blog (also available in the top menu) that focus on a variety of topics related to crustaceans and parasites.
My work with the Roberts Lab has involved both transcriptomic analyses (using R and bash) and generalized linear models. I have a general interest in bioinformatics workflows, long-term datasets, and modeling. I am a proponent for open science, and use an open-access online lab notebook as well as GitHub to share my research and support reproducibility.

Current Research

Hematodinium in Alaskan snow & Tanner crab

The parasitic dinoflagellate Hematodinium damages wild crustacean stocks and aquaculture globally. It particularly threatens Alaska's valuable snow and Tanner crab ( Chionoecetes fisheries, both through direct mortality and by turning the crab meat bitter and unmarketable. A sudden uptick of Hematodinium in the Bering Sea snow crab population may be largely culpable for the recent crash in snow crab stocks, which wiped out much of this year's fishery and caused tens of millions of dollars of losses. However, little about Hematodinium is fully understood. My research seeks to uncover how rising temperatures impact Hematodinium and Chionoecetes crab, along with the factors that increases the vulnerability of crabs to infection. By answering these questions, we can comprehend the immediate risks that crabs face along with the long-term trajectory for the fishery into the future.